


Of My Own Making

by QuickSilverFox3



Series: Whumptober 2020 [4]
Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: All tags don't apply to all drabbles, Buried Alive, Drabble Collection, F/F, Gen, Hurt No Comfort, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Medical Experimentation, Medical Trauma, Multi, Pain, Trapped, Whump
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-04
Updated: 2020-10-04
Packaged: 2021-03-07 22:47:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,005
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26815336
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/QuickSilverFox3/pseuds/QuickSilverFox3
Summary: “Is this a good idea?”“It’ll be fine,” Booker muttered, attention mostly focused on the tangle of wires in his hand, skin washed out by the harsh green light.[No 4. RUNNING OUT OF TIME Caged | Buried Alive | Collapsed Building]
Relationships: Andy | Andromache of Scythia & Booker | Sebastien le Livre, Andy | Andromache of Scythia/Quynh | Noriko, Booker | Sebastien le Livre & Nile Freeman & Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani & Nicky | Nicolo di Genova, Booker | Sebastien le Livre/Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolo di Genova, Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova
Series: Whumptober 2020 [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1947016
Comments: 2
Kudos: 73
Collections: Whumptober 2020





	Of My Own Making

**Author's Note:**

> Hope you enjoy and lmk if I've missed out any tags ^^

“I can’t move.”

Nile coughed, dust settling in her lungs, covering her skin and hair, burning her eyes but she kept crawling forwards, inch by painful inch. Loose stones and grit dug into her skin, the shattered edges of metal creaked over her head, but she pressed on.

“Where are you?” she called, voice cracking and breaking. “Call out to me!”

“I can’t move!” The voice was close by, but it was even fainter than before. Desperation coated every syllable. Nile felt tears prick at her eyes as she continued her slow crawl, the building groaning in protest above her.

* * *

  
  


Joe flinched as the cover was pulled off, reflexively ducking his head to shield his eyes. His ribs ached from the blows of too many boots—the injuries healed but the memories of the strikes would linger for a while longer—pressing against his skin.

“Oh.” The word was breathed out, almost a sigh, yet it turned his empty stomach.

Joe glanced into the plain white room, the sharp tang of sterilisation alcohol lingering on the air against the acrid scent of his own fear, gaze landing on the tray of medical instruments, blades sharp and clean.

“He’s perfect. Aren’t you darling?”

* * *

  
  


Nicky didn’t know what it felt like to dream of Quynh drowning over and over again. He’d seen Booker, and then Nile, wake gasping for breath, screams choked to a stop as their throats seized. 

In the fragments of time before he choked on his own breath, dirt around him unshifting, Nicky thought of Joe. Their time together seemed like a lifetime ago, but he clung to them.

His nails were bloodied despite his constant healing, but he kept clawing at the roof of his tomb, driven by the name of a man whose face he could no longer picture.

* * *

“Shush, it’ll be okay.”

Andy brushed careful fingers across Booker’s face, feeling the shift from tears to clotting blood at the corner of his mouth. Her arms were trapped next to her chest, Booker pinned above her by the weight of the broken building in front of them. 

“Hurts,” Booker groaned, breathing sharp and quick. He shuddered, a scream trapped and vibrating in his throat as he died.

Andy waited in the darkness, waited in the company of a corpse, hoping that Booker would come back to her even as she hated the idea of feeling him in more pain.

* * *

Nicolo waited in the darkness. He knew the men holding him—he knew their grandparents, could see shadows of the men he had considered his brothers in their faces—and it was that familiarity that gave him pause. So he let them clasp manacles around his wrists, call him a traitor, a deserter, and he prayed that Yusuf wouldn’t wake up.

It was a strange peace they had crafted for themselves, Nicolo holding back, scared to touch for fear of desecrating the other with his hands—Nicolo was a sinner, but Yusuf was beautiful.

So he waited, praying that Yusuf would be safe.

* * *

Quynh had grown used to the cycle of waking and drowning, beating her hands bloody on the metal when the mood struck her, staring out into the depths of the ocean. The first collection of sand slipping it’s way into her iron prison seemed unimportant. 

But it kept coming.

Sand lay beneath her like a bed, itching and biting into her skin, flimsy cotton fabric long since rotted away. It got between her teeth, coarse and choking her. Quynh could have laughed if she had the breath. The drowning wouldn’t kill her, not yet. But the earth itself just might.

  
  


* * *

“I don’t want to know.”

“It’s quite simple really—”

Nile cut off Joe’s explanation with a frantic wave of her hands, unable to decide between that and covering her ears.

“Joe, I do not want to know how you broke, not the bed but the ceiling—”

“He does this really amazing thing where—” Nicky interjected from the bed, sheet pulled over his hips, dust clinging to every bare inch as Nile squealed, waving her hands frantically once more.

“No I can’t. Are they always like this?”

“Yes.” Booker barely glanced up from his phone, but his grin was visible regardless.

  
  


* * *

How long had it been? Booker’s knees ached, his head ached, tears run dry and yet his shoulders heaved. Sorrow curled in his chest like a living creature, stealing his breath. 

Light flooded in as the top was opened, and Booker was gently lifted out, clinging to the arms that held him, blinking and trembling into the sunlight. He became slowly aware that he was speaking, a constant liturgy of apologies falling from his lips.

“We know,” Joe said, kissing Booker so sweetly his toes curled while Nicky pressed kisses down the curve of his spine. “We love you, completely.”

* * *

Andy didn’t move as the sand whipped around her, the wind howling out a mournful dirge. Quynh had left, Lyon’s body carefully strapped to a litter behind her horse.

“I’ll be back soon,” she had whispered, kissing Andy’s tear covered lips, licking the salt from her skin. 

Andy couldn’t move. All the energy slipped from her limbs as Lyon’s final choking breath resounded in her ears again and again and again. The sand built up around her, a buffer from the wind, but beginning to bury her beneath its weight. 

Andy thought they couldn’t die. Now she knew they could.

* * *

“Is this a good idea?”

“It’ll be fine,” Booker muttered, attention mostly focused on the tangle of wires in his hand, skin washed out by the harsh green light.

“I’ve  _ just _ got out of jail,” Nile continued in a low hiss.

“And we are very proud of you,” Joe replied, stooping to press a kiss to her forehead.

“My therapist said this would be helpful,” Booker told her, grunting as he attached the final connection.

“They did not!” Booker shrugged it off, pressing the button to blow up the building with a flourish.

“Not outright, but it was close enough.”


End file.
